64 pages • 2 hours read
Richard OsmanThe Last Devil to Die
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Literary Devices
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaSymbols & Motifs
Time
The Thursday Murder Club series revolves around a group of retirees in a community that caters toward those who are in their final years, so there is a fair bit of talk about memories, nostalgia, and the passage of time. The Last Devil to Die takes things a step further than the previous three books, however, making time a central motif. The Impact of Aging, Dementia, and Mortality is a strong theme throughout, and many of the chapters featuring Stephen include discussions about the role that time plays in his experience of the world as his dementia progresses.
Many of the book’s elderly characters feel trapped in the present. They’re still alive and moving forward, but the things and people that they love are all in the past. For Stephen, the experience of living is very different. The present is foggy and confusing; the past is the only thing he can be sure about and hold on to concretely. He is no longer experiencing time as a linear progression of events, offering readers insight into other ways of seeing and considering time: “Everything I’ve done and everything I’ve been is present in the same place. But we still think the thing that has just happened, or is about to happen, we think that’s the most important thing” (242), he says. He has found a new way to view the world even as it crumbles around him.
The Box
The box containing the heroin is key to mystery’s denouement, as it emerges that it is actually made of bone and thousands of years old. Its value as a historical artifact means that it was actually the box itself being smuggled—not the drugs. In this sense, the box is a symbol of deceptive appearances. Particularly compared to what it contains, the box seems innocuous, but like the apparently harmless members of the Thursday Mystery Club, it has hidden depths.
Conjectures regarding the box’s likely purpose lend further dimensions to its symbolism. As Jonjo explains, the box was probably meant to deter evil spirits: “This long ago, everything was religious […]. All the gods and devils were loose. This, I would say, was a sin box. It would have been outside an important tomb, to ward off the spirits” (318). This occasions much commentary from those familiar with the box’s more recent history; Elizabeth hopes to use it to catch “[o]ne final evil spirit” (319), while Garth notes that the box seems to have encouraged evil—specifically, Kuldesh’s murder—rather than prevented it. The box thus comes to symbolize the human origins of evil, particularly as Jonjo’s reference to devils hearkens back to Elizabeth’s musings on her career as a spy: “However noble the causes of her career were, they weren’t noble enough to excuse the disregard for life. Day after day, mission after mission, ridding the world of evil? Waiting for the last devil to die? What a joke. New devils always spring up” (264). However, the box is at least partially redeemed when it is repatriated to Iraq.
Snowy the Fox
One of the newest residents of Coopers Chase is the fox that comes around Elizabeth and Stephen’s apartment every day. Stephen calls him Snowy because of the white tips on his ears, but he’s known by many names among the residents. He is first mentioned as being one of the few details Joyce receives from Elizabeth about how she spent Christmas, implying his importance to Elizabeth: “I got very little out of her, except that she gave some turkey to the little fox that has taken to visiting them” (55). He appears a few more times throughout the book, but in Chapter 44, Stephen and Bogdan find him dead in the snow. It is a terrible blow for Stephen, as Snowy is one of the few things that he is able to recognize on a regular basis. They leave him for the night but come back in the morning to bury him.
When Snowy is buried, there are many people there to see him off, including Stephen, who is “out in public for the first time since goodness know when” (217). There are a few layers to this fox’s funeral. In one sense, those who have come to see Snowy off are grieving other loved ones as well. In a retirement community, loss is common and never far from the residents’ minds. Those who have come to mourn Snowy together have their own personal loved ones in mind. In another sense, Snowy’s funeral is a chance for everyone to say goodbye to someone who hasn’t left yet: Stephen, whose death Snowy’s foreshadows. Even though they are Elizabeth’s best friends, Ibrahim, Ron, and Joyce don’t see Stephen much more than anyone else. Elizabeth does her best to hide his dementia even from them, but as Joyce writes, in bringing Stephen to Snowy’s funeral, “it [feels] like Elizabeth [is] allowing [the others] to say [their] goodbyes” (217). Snowy thus becomes a symbol of mortality and of loss.
Snowy makes one final appearance in the book, in Chapter 57. As Elizabeth is lonely and restless in the early hours of the morning after Stephen’s funeral, she considers going for a walk: “She is just thinking that she might come across Snowy doing his rounds, when she remembers” (266). The implication is that Elizabeth will suffer many similar moments in the future in regard to Stephen, briefly forgetting that he is no longer with her. This connection between Snowy and Stephen is taken one step further when, moments later, she is still thinking about the two of them when she has her revelation regarding whom Kuldesh called—Stephen—and where the heroin is hidden.
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